Sinister Ambition
by wujy
Summary: It's always been Adelinde's dream to work in the Department of Mysteries, but her first day as an Unspeakable isn't going very well. She's managed to get on the bad side of everyone she's met, including the Assistant Director. Now, when a new evil makes itself known, she might be the only person who can piece together the facts and save the day. T for language and mild violence.


Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor am I affiliated with it in any way. However, this is set about ninety years after the epilogue of the books, so nearly all of the characters are originals of mine.

Note: I started this fic YEARS ago, but never had the inspiration to finish it. Now, however, I'm picking the mantle back up, re-skinning it, and breathing new life into the old girl.

The story is set four generations after the trio, and if you wish to see the family trees that I'm using, you can find links to the images in my profile. The images cover most of the main characters here.

I hope you enjoy, and as always, please review.

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><p>The Memory Chamber<p>

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><p><em><strong> Ministry of Magic, Ninth Floor<strong>_

_**Department of Mysteries**_

"It's unorthodox, really," said the woman in the too-tight skirt. Her hair was a sickly, pale gold and had been piled on top of her head with great care. "Usually there's a more stringent training and hiring process; we weren't expecting to, ah, fill the position _so soon_."

She clearly wanted to say something else, but Adelinde didn't bother to speak up about it. In fact, Adelinde had hardly heard what the woman was saying to her. She had become nearly mesmerized by the woman's overweight backside swinging back and forth as she walked, as though trying to escape from the confines of the tweed business skirt that held it. Adelinde merely followed the woman down the corridor wordlessly.

Adelinde, herself, was pretty enough with her thick, auburn hair from her father's side and her mother's icy blue eyes. She was wearing quite nice robes of dark blue, but very clearly hadn't mastered the use of an ironing spell.

"I mean, you're much younger than any of the others, and you don't meet many of the qualifications," the woman called Mrs. Button continued in her sickly sweet tone, hiding the insult within the cadence of an explanation, "but when the Minister of Magic says '_Jump!_', you jump."

Adelinde was now squinting at Mrs. Button's behind, praying that whatever magic was holding her into her clothes was damn sturdy.

"You're lucky," Mrs. Button said, forcing a terse bit of laughter. "Whole line of applicants and the Minister skipped you right to the head. You must be, ah, very _well-connected_, eh?"

_I hope the seams of that skirt are well-connected_, Adelinde thought without responding to the question. It was a trap, anyway. Everyone knew that Adelinde was the Minister's niece, and while it had its perks on occasion, it also came with the public belief that she didn't earn things on her own merits. Perhaps in this case it was a bit true, but Adelinde had every intention of making up for that on the job. She would prove herself worthy of being one of the Unspeakables!

"Well, in any case, I've been _completely_ assured that you're up for the task," Mrs. Button continued. "I had my doubts, of course. I can't help but have them, so new as you are, and with the project being of such a _sensitive_ nature. You understand, I'm sure. It's a matter of maintaining standards."

"Yeah, no, sure," Adelinde said distractedly, but she was thinking, _Whatever you want. Just as long as that skirt maintains your ass._

"Yes, well," Mrs. Button said, apparently nonplussed by Adelinde's lack of enthusiasm and conversation. (And probably her American accent, to boot!) "I do, of course, wish you all the success the Minister _believes_ you'll have."

She stopped at a door and turned to Adelinde, whose eyes snapped immediately to attention. She hoped the woman hadn't caught on to where she had been staring before. Whether she did or didn't, Adelinde couldn't be sure.

"I'll always be around, checking on progress and making _evaluations_ and all. _ If you have any questions,_" Mrs. Button said in a cheery tone that didn't do much to veil the hidden threat in her words. "Oh, and you'll be needing one of these."

Adelinde watched as Mrs. Button dug around in a tiny, pink purse strapped to her wrist for a moment before pulling out a pin no bigger than her thumbnail. It was cast in pewter and shaped like a pair of lips with a closed zipper running between them.

"You'll go in through this door here, and you'll follow the way to the proper Chamber," Mrs. Button said, leaning forward smartly to pin the Unspeakables pin to her shirt. "Do not under _any_ circumstances go into any Chamber to which you are not assigned.

Adelinde gasped as the pin pierced the skin beneath the shirt—probably on purpose—before it was securely fastened below her collar. "Sorry about that," Mrs. Button said, not bothering to sound very sincere. "Slippery little blighters. Anyway, I'll leave you to it, then. Have a lovely day, Miss Ashling."

"And you, Mrs. Bottom—_Button_!" Adelinde corrected instantly, her face turning red and her eyes popping open wide.

Mrs. Button looked entirely startled, but before she had the chance to react in any other way, Adelinde squeaked and disappeared through the door, closing it behind her. She could barely hear an indignant huff as Mrs. Button stormed off back down the corridor, and Adelinde breathed out in relief.

She clapped her hand over her eyes. "Good job, Linds," she berates herself. "First day and call the person with the power to sack you 'Mrs. Bottom.' Oh no, that's really good."

Adelinde sighed heavily and turned around to face the room. With her mouth hanging open a bit stupidly. She wandered into the center of the round room: nondescript, black doors longed the wall around her, identical to the one she'd just come through.

"Is this some sort of joke?" she asked aloud to no one. "Haze the new girl? How'm I s'posed to find the bloody Chamber without any sig—"

Before she could finish, something beyond the room shifted heavily and the room began to spin.

"No," Adelinde breathed, for she was standing perfectly still, "not the room. The wall. The wall is spinning."

Adelinde watched for several seconds as the wall that formed the perimeter of the room whipped around so quickly that the doors became a blur before her eyes. Feeling a little queasy, and needing the stability of something stationary, she knelt and placed the palm of one hand to the floor to steady herself.

After a few more moments, the spinning slowed and the wall secured itself into place once more. Adelinde stood and turned her head left and right, but as before, there were no discernible markings to indicate which door was which.

Adelinde turned to her right slowly in a circle, trying to figure out what the secret of the identical doors was. "I can't even get back to the..."

She paused in mid-sentence as the patch of skin beneath her Unspeakables pin grew hot and then cool again. Furrowing her brow, she plucked at her blouse to get a better look at the pin, but it looked ordinary enough. Letting it fall back against her shoulder, she continued turning in her circle. She felt the pin grow cold like ice against her skin and then go back to normal as she completed her rotation.

Adelinde smirked to herself. She turned back to her left until the pin grew ice cold once more, and walked toward the door in front of her. It opened onto the hallway she had walked down with Mrs. Button. She closed the door and grinned.

Back in the center of the room, she turned until the pin turned hot once more.

"Am I getting warm?" she asked no one in particular, feel very self-satisfied.

She walked briskly toward the door in front of her. It opened inward at her touch, and closed immediately after she had stepped through. On the other side, Adelinde found herself at the head of a long, dark corridor with a bright, white light at the end of it. Suddenly, she felt apprehensive and a little claustrophobic. She tucked one finger in her collar and tugged lightly on the fabric there.

"Oh, sure thing," she said out loud to herself, her tone sarcastic. "Nothing to worry about, Adelinde. Just walk into the light at the end of the tunnel. No big deal."

Taking a deep breath and straightening her shirt—the nicest button-up she owned. With no clue what to expect at the other end of the hall, she strode forward, expertly covering her anxiety with false confidence.

"As Great Uncle Albus always said: 'When in doubt, pretend you know precisely what you're doing.'" She smiled at the old memory, a happy smile tinged at the edges with sadness. She missed the old codger.

By the time Adelinde reached the end of the corridor, her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, leaving her blinking rapidly in the light of a brightly-lit atrium. When she had blinked all the spots out of her vision, the blurry form of a desk swam into view. Behind the desk sat a smartly-dressed young man wearing impeccable black robes and a pair of rimless glasses. A placard set into the front of the desk read:

_Hanson Creevey-Caddock_

_Assistant Director_

He was in the process of enchanting a memo that had been folded into the shape of a paper airplane when Adelinde approached, wiping unceremoniously at her eyes.

"If you cast Lumos while you're in the corridor, your eyes won't need to adjust when you get to the atrium," he told her without looking up from his task. The memo lifted into the air a moment later and flew by her, nicking her ear as it passed.

Adelinde clapped a hand over the ear and winced when she felt the minuscule line of a paper cut there. "Yeah, thanks," she said, watching the self-propelled memo fly back the way she had come. She pointed at it, turning back to the man at the desk.

"How does that thing navigate the vomitorium?" she asked him.

The man—Hanson—had already turned his attention back to the paperwork on his desk when Adelinde addressed him. His forehead krinkled in confusion as he looked up at her.

"Vomit-what?" he asked, and then an instant later: "Oh, you mean the round room," he said, shaking his head. "It doesn't," he said, sounding unimpressed, his full attention already back on the bundle of papers on the top of his In box. "It's what we locals call _ magic._"

"Wow," Adelinde responded with mock-awe. "Is everybody who works here an asshole?"

The young man looked up suddenly with wide, indignant eyes as though startled by Adelinde's crass language and blunt delivery. After a long moment that Adelinde wasn't entirely confident wouldn't end in her swift and immediate termination, he frowned at her and sighed. He dug a manila folder out from the middle of his pile—careful not to upset the comically-high stack of incomplete work—and laid it open across his desk.

"I'll take it you're Miss Ashling," he said, flipping through the thin stack of papers in the folder. "Remind me, are you actually _qualified _for this position?"

"Well—" Adelinde began, but she was interrupted by Hanson.

"Yes, that's what I thought," he said firmly, leaving no room for Adelinde to argue. She really had no leg to stand on, anyway; she _wasn't_ qualified. Not in the traditional sense, anyway.

He went on, flipping through her personnel file casually, his tone cutting. "Of the numerous lofty requirements deemed necessary for your position, one of the few you actually possess is the ability to _read. _Congratulations, by the way. As a result of that accomplishment, I'll assume that you have already determined that I am the Assistant Director of Memory Chamber Affairs, a position I acquired by meeting the standards of employment and experience set forth by the Department Head, and by working very, very hard."

He looked up from the file at this point and looked her directly in the eyes. "I don't care who your aunt is. I'm not here to be friendly, Miss Ashling," he said firmly. "I'm here to do the work. So should you be."

He looked away again, leaving Adelinde too stunned by his frankness to respond, and tapped the top page of her personnel file with his wand. It folded itself into a nest paper airplane, which he sent off with a flick of his wrist. "Follow the memo," he said impatiently, string aside her file to continue what he was doing before she interrupted him. "It's going to the Director. She'll see you now."

The airplane zoomed down a tight hallway that Adelinde hasn't noticed before. She looked from it to the man at the desk briefly, feeling silly and scolded, before turning silently and following it.


End file.
